...that can limit growth of the organ. Thus, one theoretical view is that an organ may produce substances that serve to limit its own growth, thereby establishing a feedback mechanism. A protein called nerve-growth factor is important for the growth of some parts of the mammalian nervous system. If too much of the nerve-growth factor is present, growth of sympathetic nerve fibres is extensive and....

Italian engineer and architect, internationally renowned for his technical ingenuity and dramatic sense of design, especially as applied to large-span structures built of reinforced concrete. His important works include a prefabricated 309-foot-span arch for the Turin Exhibition (1949–50) and the first skyscraper in Italy, the Pirelli Building (1955) in Milan, a collabora...

...line between Celtic and Germanic peoples. On the coast of northern France and in Flanders lived the Morini; to the north of them, between the Schelde River and the sea, the Menapii; in Artois, the Nervii; between the Schelde and the Rhine, the Eburones and the Aduatuci; and, in what is now Luxembourg, the Treveri. North of the Rhine, the Frisii (Frisians) were the principal inhabitants,......

poet and diplomat, generally considered the most distinguished Mexican poet of the late 19th- and early 20th-century literary movement known as Modernismo. Nervo’s introspective poetry, characterized by deep religious feeling and simple forms, reflects his struggle for self-understanding and inner peace in an uncertain world....

poet and diplomat, generally considered the most distinguished Mexican poet of the late 19th- and early 20th-century literary movement known as Modernismo. Nervo’s introspective poetry, characterized by deep religious feeling and simple forms, reflects his struggle for self-understanding and inner peace in an uncertain world....

...Shimmer Chinodya, Chenjerai Hove, Yvonne Vera, Alexander Kanengoni, J. Nozipo Maraire, and Batisai Parwada are among Zimbabwe’s writers in English. Tsitsi Dangarembga wrote Nervous Conditions (1988), a story of two Shona girls, Tambudzai and Nyasha, both attempting to find their place in contemporary Zimbabwe. Nyasha has been abroad and wonders about the effect.....

In animals, in addition to chemical regulation via the endocrine system, there is another integrative system called the nervous system. A nervous system can be defined as an organized group of cells, called neurons, specialized for the conduction of an impulse—an excited state—from a sensory receptor through a nerve network to an effector, the site at which the response occurs....

Many other agents that appear to cause chronic and slowly progressive diseases, particularly those affecting the nervous system, have been identified. A fatal neurological disorder of sheep, called scrapie, has an incubation period of years and may be caused by a heat-resistant protein called a prion, which is self-replicating. Similar, rather obscure agents have been identified for two......

any of the diseases or disorders that affect the functioning of the human nervous system. Everything that humans sense, consider, and effect and all the unlearned reflexes of the body depend on the functioning of the nervous system. The skeleton and muscles support and transport the body, and the digestive system, heart, and lungs provide nutrients; but the nervous system contai...

system that conducts stimuli from sensory receptors to the brain and spinal cord and that conducts impulses back to other parts of the body. As with other higher vertebrates, the human nervous system has two main parts: the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system (the nerves that carry impulses to and from the centr...

Bell’s later research on the anatomy of the brain resulted in an expanded version of his 1811 volume, entitled The Nervous System of the Human Body (1830). In these books Bell distinguished between sensory nerves that conduct impulses to the central nervous system and motor nerves that convey impulses from the brain or from other nerve centres to a peripheral organ of response. He......

in psychology and biology, any environmental or physical pressure that elicits a response from an organism. In most cases, stress promotes survival because it forces organisms to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. For example, in response to unusually hot or dry weather, plants prevent the loss of water by closing microscopic pores called stomata...

The intermediate nerve contains autonomic (parasympathetic) as well as general and special sensory fibres. Preganglionic autonomic fibres, classified as general visceral efferent, project from the superior salivatory nucleus in the pons. Exiting with the facial nerve, they pass to the pterygopalatine ganglion via the greater petrosal nerve (a branch of the facial nerve) and to the submandibular......

groundbreaking eight-bit video game console created by Japanese designer Uemura Masayuki. The Nintendo console, or Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), was released as the Famicom in Japan on July 15, 1983. The Famicom offered the ability to play popular arcade games such as Donkey Kong on a home televisi...

king of ancient Egypt (1070–44 bce), founder of the 21st dynasty (1075–c. 950 bce), who established the capital at Tanis, in the northeast Nile River delta, while high priests of Amon ruled Thebes and Upper Egypt....

...their only serious rival. The distinctiveness of the Cotton Pickers’ work during the band’s heyday is attributable primarily to the remarkable leadership and the composing and arranging talents of John Nesbitt, whose work was mistakenly credited to Redman for many decades. Nesbitt was obviously aware and respectful of Ellington’s fast-tempo “stomp” pieces. And...

historic town and resort, eastern Bulgaria, on the Black Sea coast. Nesebŭr is situated on an island connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. The Greek colony of Mesembria was founded on the site late in the 6th century bc and thrived on the trade between Greece and Thrace. It was relatively unimportant during the Roman occupation but regained it...

city, southern Uzbekistan, in the Karshi oasis, on the Kashka River. At least 1,000 years old, it lay on the caravan route from Samarkand and Bukhara to Afghanistan and India; it was known as Nakhsheb, or Nesef, until the 14th century, when a fort (Turkic karshi, “against”) was built there. Later, as part of the khanate of Bukhara, it serv...

(Turkish: “Ash Hill”), ancient mound covering the Bronze Age city of Kanesh, in central Turkey. Kültepe was known to archaeologists during the 19th century, but it began to attract particular attention as the reputed source of so-called Cappadocian tablets in Old Assyrian cuneiform writing and language. Finally, in 1925, Bedřich Hrozn...

Greek sculptors known for their bronze figures of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogiton, copies of the original bronzes executed by Antenor about 510 bc, which were taken by Xerxes I to Susa and subsequently lost. The copies were placed in the agora in Athens; the figure of the tyrannicides has been identified on Roman coins, vases, reliefs, and fragments. One of the finest cop...

...(the “Land of Hatti”), whose non-Indo-European language is known as Hattian (Khattian, Hattic, or Khattic). Although it is now known that these Indo-Europeans called their language Nesite (after the city of Nesa), it is still, confusingly, called Hittite. Besides Nesite, two other Indo-European dialects were found in Anatolia: Luwian (Luvian), spoken by immigrants into......

novel by Milan Kundera, first published in 1984 in an English translation and in a French translation as L’Insoutenable Légèreté de l’être. In 1985 the work was published in the original Czech as Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, but it was banned in Czechoslovakia until 1989....

...and push up mounds of earth at intervals that conceal entrances and exits. They forage on bulbs and succulent roots, rarely emerging above ground, and cause extensive damage to grain crops. N. bunnii, however, is as large as the greater bandicoot rat, with thick fur and a very long tail relative to body length. An excellent swimmer, it lives in natural marshes at the confluence.....

Of the two species of Nesokia, the short-tailed bandicoot rat, or pest rat (N. indica), is almost the size of the lesser bandicoot rat, with soft brown fur and a short tail. Its range extends from northern Bangladesh through Central Asia to northeastern Egypt and also north of the Himalayas from Turkmenistan to western China. Inhabiting cultivated fields and......

...is declining owing to habitat destruction and predation by introduced mongooses and by feral dogs and cats. The rabbits most threatened with extinction, however, are found in Southeast Asia. The Sumatran rabbit (Nesolagus netscheri) is known to live in the island’s southwestern montane forests. Although there has been only one confirmed sighting of this animal since 1916,...

...forests. Although there has been only one confirmed sighting of this animal since 1916, two pictures of the rabbit were captured with an automated camera in 1998. Another striped rabbit (N. timminsi) distantly related to the Sumatran rabbit was discovered in the Annamite mountains of Laos and Vietnam during the late 1990s....

Other species of Mimus range from Central and South America to Patagonia, and the blue mockingbird (Melanotis) inhabits much of Mexico. The Galapagos mockingbird (Nesomimus) has various races or subspecies on the different islands, showing an adaptive radiation similar to, but not as extreme as, that found in the Galapagos finch....

...rats, and bamboo rats). Other groups, however, cannot be classified with certainty and may or may not be a hodgepodge of unrelated genera and species (New World rats and mice, dendromurines, and Malagasy rats and mice). Also unresolved are the affinities of subfamilies containing only one genus (mouselike hamsters, the maned rat)....

...rats). Other groups, however, cannot be classified with certainty and may or may not be a hodgepodge of unrelated genera and species (New World rats and mice, dendromurines, and Malagasy rats and mice). Also unresolved are the affinities of subfamilies containing only one genus (mouselike hamsters, the maned rat)....

compound with a structure in which independent silicate tetrahedrons (a central silicon atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms at the corners of a tetrahedron) are present. Because none of the oxygen atoms is shared by other tetrahedrons, the chemical formula contains a multiple of SiO4, as in zircon, topaz, or olivine....

...Salish include the Shuswap, Lillooet, and Ntlakapamux (Thompson) tribes. The Interior Salish live mostly in the Upper Columbia area and include the Okanagan, Sinkaietk, Lake, Wenatchee, Sanpoil, Nespelim, Spokan, Kalispel, Pend d’Oreille, Coeur d’Alene, and Flathead peoples. Some early works incorrectly denote all Salishan groups as “Flathead.”...

...Salish include the Shuswap, Lillooet, and Ntlakapamux (Thompson) tribes. The Interior Salish live mostly in the Upper Columbia area and include the Okanagan, Sinkaietk, Lake, Wenatchee, Sanpoil, Nespelim, Spokan, Kalispel, Pend d’Oreille, Coeur d’Alene, and Flathead peoples. Some early works incorrectly denote all Salishan groups as “Flathead.”...

lake, lying in the Highland council area, Scotland. With a depth of 788 feet (240 metres) and a length of about 23 miles (36 km), Loch Ness has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain. It lies in the Glen Mor—or Great Glen, which bisects the Highlands—and forms part of the system of waterways across Scotland that civil engineer Thomas Telford linked by m...

...the Labours, Heracles undertook further enterprises, including warlike campaigns. He also successfully fought the river god Achelous for the hand of Deianeira. As he was taking her home, the Centaur Nessus tried to violate her, and Heracles shot him with one of his poisoned arrows. The Centaur, dying, told Deianeira to preserve the blood from his wound, for if Heracles wore a garment rubbed wit...

structure created by an animal to house its eggs, its young, or, in some cases, itself. Nests are built by a few invertebrates, especially the social insects, and by some members of all the major vertebrate groups....

...in Great Britain and the United States. Returning to Ireland, he taught briefly until the success of Midsummer Night Madness and Other Stories (1932), his first collection of stories, and A Nest of Simple Folk (1933), a novel set in the period between the Easter Rising (1916) and the establishment of the Irish Free State (1921), allowed him to write full-time. O’Faolain pro...

structure created by an animal to house its eggs, its young, or, in some cases, itself. Nests are built by a few invertebrates, especially the social insects, and by some members of all the major vertebrate groups....

...and incubated by the hosts, the newly hatched cuckoo faces the problem of securing enough to eat from its small foster parents. The young cuckoo has evolved an astonishing form of behaviour, that of nest-mate eviction, that ensures that it will not have to compete with members of the foster brood for food. Within a few hours of hatching, the blind, naked, young cuckoo develops a strong urge to....

In November 1913 Beachey became the first to “loop the loop” in the United States, but the first flyer ever to loop was Russian flyer Petr Nesterov (d. 1914, in one of the early dogfights of World War I). Nesterov performed his loop on September 9 (August 27, Old Style), 1913, a feat that was soon repeated by the French pilot Adolphe Pégoud (d. 1915 in World War I air......

...St. Petersburg, and other nearby cities. In addition to providing popular ceramics, the Abramtsevo artists—particularly Sergey Malyutin—crafted the first matryoshka doll (a wooden nesting doll) in 1890. Matryoshkas were then exhibited by Abramtsevo artists at the 1900 world’s fair in Paris, and they...

...Libby (1970), the Stouffer Corporation (1973), and one of America’s largest food companies, the Carnation Company (1985). In 2002 Nestlé’s purchase of Ralston Purina created a new division, Nestlé Purina PetCare, while Nestlé’s American ice cream businesses were consolidated under the Dreyer’s brand. Chef America, Inc., a frozen-food company, was...

in Greek legend, son of Neleus, king of Pylos (Navarino) in Elis, and of Chloris. All of his brothers were slain by the Greek hero Heracles, but Nestor escaped. In the Iliad he is about 70 years old and sage and pious; his role is largely to incite the warriors to battle and to tell stories of his early exploits, which contrast with his listeners...

...which was usually supported by columns. Early Greek architecture used the megaron, and it also became an important element in the Classical temple. A typical megaron plan is that of the palace of Nestor at Pylos, where the large main unit apparently served as royal living quarters. It faced onto the usual courtyard, which was entered through a decorative gateway with fluted columns on either......

...scripts, characters are fastened to a bottom horizontal. Modern typefaces used to print Syriac, which has survived as a language, have the same characteristic. Eastern Syriac script was called Nestorian after Nestorius, who led a secession movement from the Orthodox Church of Byzantium that flourished in Persia and spread along trade routes deep into Asia....

member of a Christian sect originating in Asia Minor and Syria out of the condemnation of Nestorius and his teachings by the councils of Ephesus (ad 431) and Chalcedon (ad 451). Nestorians stressed the independence of the divine and human natures of Christ and, in effect, suggested that they were two persons loosely united. In modern times they are re...

The subfamily Nestorinae is found only in New Zealand. The kea (Nestor notabilis) occasionally tears into sheep carcasses (rarely, weakened sheep) to get at the fat around the kidneys. The kaka, N. meridionalis, a gentler forest bird, is often kept as a pet. The owl parrot, or kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), also lives only in New Zealand. It is the sole member of the......

early bishop of Constantinople whose views on the nature and person of Christ led to the calling of the Council of Ephesus in 431 and to Nestorianism, one of the major Christian heresies. A few small Nestorian churches still exist. (See also Nestorian.)...

...of two main types: plain curved or carinated forms related to the silverware and pottery of Troy and embossed conical vessels of the Minoan tradition. Some of the plain pieces, such as the so-called Nestor’s cup, have handles ending in animals, which bite the rim or peer into the cup. The embossed ornament consists of vertical and horizontal bands of rosettes and spiral coils and of flor...

river in southwestern Bulgaria and western Thrace, Greece. The Néstos rises on Kolarov peak of the Rila Mountains of the northwestern Rhodope (Rodopi) Mountains. The river’s upper confluents separate the Rila and Pirin ranges from the main Rhodope massif. Crossing the Bulgarian frontier into Greece, the Néstos divides Greek Macedonia from Greek Thrace. From just west of Stavro...

river in southwestern Bulgaria and western Thrace, Greece. The Néstos rises on Kolarov peak of the Rila Mountains of the northwestern Rhodope (Rodopi) Mountains. The river’s upper confluents separate the Rila and Pirin ranges from the main Rhodope massif. Crossing the Bulgarian frontier into Greece, the Néstos divides Greek Macedonia from Greek Thrace. From just west of Stavro...

Taxes on net worth are levied on the total net worth of a person—that is, the value of his assets minus his liabilities. As with the income tax, the personal circumstances of the taxpayer can be taken into consideration....

Bag nets are kept vertically open by a frame and held horizontally stretched by the water current. There are small scoop nets that can be pushed and dragged and big stownets, with and without wings, held on stakes or on anchors with or without a vessel. There is also a special winged type with boards or metal plates (called otter boards) that keep it spread open. Stownets, larger than scoop......

...long-term bonds and such items as obligations to employees under company pension plans. The difference between total current assets and total current liabilities is known as net current assets, or working capital....

...body functions, either as a percentage of the diet or as the total grams or units required per day. The amounts of energy needed are measured as digestible energy (DE), metabolizable energy (ME), net energy (NE), or total digestible nutrients (TDN). These values differ with species. The gross energy (GE) value of a feed is the amount of heat liberated when it is burned in a bomb calorimeter.......

in business usage, the excess of total revenue over total cost during a specific period of time. In economics, profit is the excess over the returns to capital, land, and labour (interest, rent, and wages). To the economist, much of what is classified in business usage as profit consists of the implicit wages of manager-owners, the implicit rent on land owned by the firm, and the implicit interes...

...the gains and losses recognized during the period, including both the results of the company’s normal, day-to-day activities and any other events. If net income is negative, it is referred to as a net loss....

...estimates of both d and GDP are possible, each giving a different d/GDP ratio. Capitalist economies, which use the GDP, measure economic activity differently from communist economies, which use a net material product (NMP) system. The NMP excludes many expenditures, including state administration and defense, normally included under GDP. This complicates comparisons between these systems....

Microgeneration adopters experience cost savings by using less energy from the grid, and those who create surplus power can make a profit by selling excess electricity back to local electrical utilities. In the United States, under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, all public electric utilities are required to make net metering available to customers on request. The process of net metering credits......

The future of “net neutrality”—the idea that all Internet content should be treated equally by companies that control access to the Internet—remained unresolved, although the FCC continued to push for it. The FCC support had been based on the idea that net neutrality would prevent the telephone and cable TV companies, which were large Internet service providers, from......

...be collected with a coarse net, and morphological details of individual organisms are easily discernible. These forms, 1 mm (0.04 inch) or more in length, ordinarily do not include phytoplankton. Microplankton (also called net plankton) is composed of organisms between 0.05 and 1 mm (0.002 and 0.04 inch) in size and is a mixture of phytoplankton and zooplankton. The lower limit of its size......

...and met with fierce opposition, in the general interest of the industry it was inevitable. Like copyright, it helped to provide a firm structure within which fair prices could be calculated. The net price principle, first raised in the previous century by the German publisher Reich, was adopted in Germany in 1887 through the work of the Börsenverein, the trade organization founded in......

...substances. The total amount of productivity in a region or system is gross primary productivity. A certain amount of organic material is used to sustain the life of producers; what remains is net productivity. Net marine primary productivity is the amount of organic material available to support the consumers (herbivores and carnivores) of the sea. The standing crop is the total biomass......

The average number of offspring that a female produces during her lifetime is called the net reproductive rate (R0). If all females survived to the oldest possible age for that population, the net reproductive rate would simply be the sum of the average number of offspring produced by females at each age. In real populations, however, some females die at every age. The......

Taxes on net worth are levied on the total net worth of a person—that is, the value of his assets minus his liabilities. As with the income tax, the personal circumstances of the taxpayer can be taken into consideration....

...the family Dinopidae (or Deinopidae; order Araneida). One pair of eyes is unusually large, producing an ogrelike appearance. The spiders occur throughout the tropics. One genus, Dinopis, the net-casting spider, carries a web that is thrown over prey....

Metamorphic reactions can be classified into two types that show different degrees of sensitivity to temperature and pressure changes: net-transfer reactions and exchange reactions. Net-transfer reactions involve the breakdown of preexisting mineral phases and corresponding nucleation and growth of new phases. (Nucleation is the process in which a crystal begins to grow from one or more points,......

any of some 2,800 species of soft-bodied, brightly coloured, predominately tropical beetles (insect order Coleoptera) whose wing covers, or elytra, are broader at the tip than at the base and are characterized by a raised network of lines, or veins. The adults feed either on plant juices or on other insects and can easily be seen as they fly slowly between plants or crawl on flowers. The bold colo...

city, west-central Israel. It lies on the Mediterranean coast, 19 miles (30 km) north of Tel Aviv–Yafo. Because of its proximity to the West Bank, the city was a frequent target of bombings by Palestinian terrorists at the beginning of the 21st century....

popular game in girls’ schools in England and several other British Commonwealth countries, similar to six-player girls’ basketball in the United States. It is played on a hard-surfaced rectangular court 100 feet long and 50 feet wide (30 by 15 metres), clearly marked into three zones with half circles 16 feet in radius at either end for shooting. The goalposts sta...

...brokerage firm. In 1998 Milner and other investors bought a macaroni manufacturer and transformed it into a very succesful concern. The next year, Milner cofounded a venture capital firm, NetBridge, and began investing in Russian Internet companies. When the Internet bubble burst in 2000–01, NetBridge merged with Port.ru, which, as Mail.ru, became one of Russia’s most successful.....